Silver/Vendor Items are Overpriced

Forum for suggesting changes to Salem.

Re: Silver/Vendor Items are Overpriced

Postby ShadowTani » Mon Aug 06, 2012 2:37 pm

JeffGV wrote:
ShadowTani wrote: higher price for Nails (For example 45 silver - and yes, I'm serious, a metal bar cost 200 and give you 5 nails, it should be cheaper to buy a metal bar and make the nails yourself).

Imho, you're wrong here. The point of buying bars is that you can do various things with them; nails are just those, nails.
A change like the one you suggested would make it possible for people to buy bars from the stall, make nails and sell those to other players with a profit (they can already do this with the sabre, actually, and i find this quite wrong as well).

Well, I dunno, I just find it more realistic that the processed material is more expensive than the raw material. ;P If it's really a problem they could remove or replace the iron bar requirement for the Ore Smelter, then pull the metal bar off the market and that way force people to produce their own ore - or if wanting it to be a bit challenging to get into the metal market, keep the requirement and place a few ore smelters for public use (similar to the windmills) inside Boston. :3
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Re: Silver/Vendor Items are Overpriced

Postby TotalyMoo » Mon Aug 06, 2012 2:49 pm

ShadowTani wrote:
JeffGV wrote:
ShadowTani wrote: higher price for Nails (For example 45 silver - and yes, I'm serious, a metal bar cost 200 and give you 5 nails, it should be cheaper to buy a metal bar and make the nails yourself).

Imho, you're wrong here. The point of buying bars is that you can do various things with them; nails are just those, nails.
A change like the one you suggested would make it possible for people to buy bars from the stall, make nails and sell those to other players with a profit (they can already do this with the sabre, actually, and i find this quite wrong as well).

Well, I dunno, I just find it more realistic that the processed material is more expensive than the raw material. ;P If it's really a problem they could remove or replace the iron bar requirement for the Ore Smelter, then pull the metal bar off the market and that way force people to produce their own ore - or if wanting it to be a bit challenging to get into the metal market, keep the requirement and place a few ore smelters for public use (similar to the windmills) inside Boston. :3


That would end up with a huge ***** around the smelters when they reached the end of a cycle. Heh.
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Re: Silver/Vendor Items are Overpriced

Postby ShadowTani » Mon Aug 06, 2012 2:59 pm

TotalyMoo wrote:That would end up with a huge ***** around the smelters when they reached the end of a cycle. Heh.

Ah yes, that's true, I completely forgot there's like a 45 min processing time. But the mental image of hundreds of players rushing to the smelters was priceless, haha. xD
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Re: Silver/Vendor Items are Overpriced

Postby Veliel » Mon Aug 06, 2012 10:27 pm

Here's my quick analysis of the current pricing system.

Issues:

1. Scaling seems really awkward. You get 25Siver/$ for 10$ and 40/Silver$ for the 25$ purchase.

I know it's supposed to convince customers to go for the bigger purchase, but this is off too much in a game where "nothing is permanent". The numbers chosen seem really random.
It's also quite funny that you can purchase 20 Silver but there is only 1 item you could buy with it. (Obv. not bad when you are just off)

In a game like Salem where Stall items are for a "quicker start into the world" or to get "just that missing item" it seems reasonable to believe that people would be spending smaller amounts more often and not really
go for bigger purchases, but when you look at the sub 25$ options they are really bad.

2. 1:1 Purchase to item comparison scares off buyers completely. As in "A backpack costs 10$ wtf"

Nobody likes to pay 10$ for a backpack that he could lose by getting killed the next day. This may not be the market price in trading in between players, but that's something no beginner will actually know before he gets scared off by the price.
Also it's very important for paying customers to get what they need quickly, they don't want to spend money in a store to "maybe get that backpack in the evening from a trader" they pay money because they want the things at that moment.

3. Why just reducing prices doesn't work -> Just tweaking the numbers won't work

Well compared to the backpack you can actually buy a decent piece of claim for 250s if you have a stone set up and we don't want players who spent little amounts of money in salem to have giagantic claims.

Proposal:

Introduce new currency (i know this has been suggested, but I don't think there is an easier way around the issues the current system has) name it gold or something.

Make gold (or whatever) exchangable 1:1 for silver. This would would keep the system simple (as was intended with silver).

Make certain things like backpack, or "newbies super starter set" purchasable for gold only but cheaper than silver. Add vanity items for gold as you please.
keep the system fairly simple.

You can still tweak the numbers in the store, because as i said they seem really awkward
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Re: Silver/Vendor Items are Overpriced

Postby jtwain80 » Tue Aug 07, 2012 1:15 am

Veliel wrote:Introduce new currency (i know this has been suggested, but I don't think there is an easier way around the issues the current system has) name it gold or something.

Make gold (or whatever) exchangable 1:1 for silver. This would would keep the system simple (as was intended with silver).

Make certain things like backpack, or "newbies super starter set" purchasable for gold only but cheaper than silver. Add vanity items for gold as you please.
keep the system fairly simple.

You can still tweak the numbers in the store, because as i said they seem really awkward


Basically this. I'd suggest setting the gold price of items in the stall to reflect expected average trader prices. an Iron bar costs 200 silver in the stall, and we expect traders to sell it for around 100, set the gold price in the stall to 100 gold. My numbers are random but you get the idea.

Then you can add all sorts of random vanity things that are for sale for gold only.
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Re: Silver/Vendor Items are Overpriced

Postby Sparkky » Fri Aug 10, 2012 7:42 pm

The problem is 1000 silver is REALLY not hard to get once you're in a town that's setup.

100 dollars or a couple days of casual playing? for what?

In my mind the cost of items from the store needs to increase and the amount of silver you get for your money does, I had every intention of buying silver to expedite my progress, but with the current system I really don't see the value.
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Re: Silver/Vendor Items are Overpriced

Postby staxjax » Fri Aug 10, 2012 7:59 pm

Sparkky wrote:I had every intention of buying silver to expedite my progress, but with the current system I really don't see the value.


Mostly because there is nothing that I need or want to buy at the shop.
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Re: Silver/Vendor Items are Overpriced

Postby Sevenless » Mon Aug 13, 2012 6:12 pm

Still not listening to me about how graduated pricing goes against the point of the Microtransaction model I see.

If the point is to get the person who wants to spend 1$ on the game, and the person who wants to spend 100$ on the game to both pay in. Why are we punishing someone who only wants to pay 1$? I get that we're trying to encourage people to buy bigger, but that's not what Microtransactions are about. It's in the name for a reason.
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Re: Silver/Vendor Items are Overpriced

Postby Argost » Tue Aug 14, 2012 12:56 am

ShadowTani wrote:
Droj wrote:I easy enough once you have the skills, even slacking getting at least 1 cricket team / hour.

I agree, once you have the skills grinding for 1k silver doesn't become particularly hard with some patience. In my last game I had about 10 skins and three cricket teams and two savage charms to sell each day (playing from late afternoon to late evening only) and I didn't even have all skills, my best tool for that was my saber and fencing abilities - at the very end I also started making leather which would added to the daily value. That means considering buying 1k silver for $100 becomes ridiculous other than for supporting the developers. I tend to use in-game shops, but I don't buy if it's not a need, and I don't buy pity. I also work with economy and administration in real life so I get itchy when I see business models like this, lol. xD

My point is, the current prices are scaled based on current product prices - and the current products are mostly in-game objects that players can make themselves, and a few uniques. It doesn't look like you developers have been considering future cash shop products at all based on it? I dunno what direction you want to go with the cash shop though - but I know things like inventory expansions, larger backpacks, decent vanity items, cute pets and so forth do sell rather well in other MMO's. I'd pay for a cuter (slimmer and less grim) character model myself, lol. Special resources like marble for special structures like churches could be considered too. Also in a game with perma death people would really go nuts for clone vouchers or what to call it, and more high tier inspirationals too. I can imagine people pay the full $100 for a clone voucher. However, such an option would be very unpopular with the non-paying players (because they would feel forced to get one somehow), but it would guarantee you a decent cash flow. The silver amount (or maybe introduce gold for these special tier items?) should have been scaled with these future items in mind.

Other MMO's have regular in-game money which is often 100 times less worth than the cash shop currency while the cash shop currency is like ten times less worth than real life currency, Salem now have in-game money that is worth ten times less than real life currency (at best), that's crazy! I'm sorry guys, but I like your game and want to see you make a profit on your hard work. I'm not suggesting to copy the rates of other MMO's however. I get the impression you have the noble intention to have all products grindable for everyone - in such a scenario keeping in-game currency (silver) 100 times less worth than real life currency would be more appropriate, then higher price "cash shop" items, like 1500 silver (or 150 gold) for an unique (non-craftable) larger backpack (twice the size of the current one) would have a decent balance between what is acceptable to grind to wards and the value you get for your real life money. My point is that you shouldn't have a cash shop value you can grind towards in just a day or two which is the case for the current craftable backpack.

And it shouldn't be too hard to compensate those who have already bought silver. If you increase the silver amount with ten times or introduce gold, just add the remaining 9 times of what it was - i.e. if a player have bought 1000 silver ($100) add additional 9k silver to their account, or 900 gold. :3

Edit: Obs! I see the prices have been changed from 1k to 5k silver at $100. xD I didn't get to check before now due to the game being down before. It's still a 1:10 ratio at the lowest though, and a 1:50 ratio at the highest. Somewhat close still between in-game and real-life currency, but it's at least better than before. :3 I'm curious to see what kinda products you have planned to attract me to buy silver though. ;3 Because at the moment, there's nothing I couldn't grind to wards. There should be some cash shop tier products - and at the moment only the town charter qualify for that tier.



This right here. I for one do not think you need to make buying silver to cheap. You will end up with the games economy just flat out going into the toilet. Everything will become super inflated price wise, and any new players wont have a chance without buying a lot of silver.
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Re: Silver/Vendor Items are Overpriced

Postby Argost » Tue Aug 14, 2012 1:01 am

Sevenless wrote:Still not listening to me about how graduated pricing goes against the point of the Microtransaction model I see.

If the point is to get the person who wants to spend 1$ on the game, and the person who wants to spend 100$ on the game to both pay in. Why are we punishing someone who only wants to pay 1$? I get that we're trying to encourage people to buy bigger, but that's not what Microtransactions are about. It's in the name for a reason.


There is always going to be the ones who will spend big and those who can't. I just do not want to see the devs drop prices into the toilet just to satisfy the people who can not afford to buy silver. Buying silver is not a requirement to the game it is a luxury, as will be buying any kind of fluff items they may add. No offense to those who can't afford to buy items but hey let's be real. Seatribe I would guess is after the ones who WILL spend money. I mean if they catered to the people who didn't how would they fund their company?
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